24 Jun 2009
Saint Louis: Reliably Excellent
It is quite possible that Opera Theatre of Saint Louis is the leading summer opera destination in the United States.
Recently in Reviews
MENDELSSOHN: Athalia
In addition, to his popular score to A Midsummer Night’s Dream Felix Mendelssohn wrote incidental music to several other plays. Commissioned by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV, the incidental music to Athalia was intended for a private performance of the play by Jean Racine. While the story is a complicated Old Testament plot, Mendelssohn’s music captures the tone of the tragedy with delight, whimsy, and severity.
MORRIS: Reading Opera Between the Lines: Orchestral Interludes and Cultural Meaning from Wagner to Berg
Interludes in opera articulate moments when the lush voices of singers and vivid spectacle of scenery and action are removed and often the curtain is drawn, and thus they span a functional gap between textless instrumental music and explicit theatrical vehicle. Although composers and analysts suggest rich and multivalent meanings for the music, those implications often escape decoding by audiences. Even the interlude titles — Zwischenspiel, entr'acte, intermezzo — suggest their intermission-like nature. As functional placeholders for scene changes and the like, the interludes are for many a cue to relax attentive listening, read synopses, and whisper with companions. Undaunted by such complexities, Morris takes up the problematic nature of operatic interludes, engaging their ambiguities with eyes wide open in an effort to enrich our understanding of these challenging bits of music.
GOEHRING: Three modes of perception in Mozart — the philosophical, pastoral, and comic in Così fan tutte
According to the book jacket, this is the first major scholarly study of Così fan tutte, considered to be one of Mozart's least-understood operas and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte's most interesting text. Così fan tutte has been studied extensively, despite the broad assertion stated in the book. What the author of this study brings to the reader, which others have not, is a detailed examination of the philosophical, pastoral, and comic background of the libretto, characters, and music of the opera. New perspectives on text and tone in the opera, the subtle use of the pastoral mode, and the tension and balance between philosophy and comedy are what the author brings to the study of this work. In addition, the author does an intensely close reading of the primary sources of the opera, in order to support his theories and statements.
TRIBO: Annals 1847-1897 del Gran Teatre del Liceu
The importance of the Teatre del Liceu, can not be overstated. The house ranks with all the leading theatres of the world, being right up there with Paris, London, New York, Vienna, Madrid, Rome, Milan, Lisbon, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Turin, Naples, Buenos Aires, and other cities of comparable importance. During its long history (158 years at the time of writing) it featured many of the great singers. These include Caruso, Battistini, Tamagno, Ruffo, Caballe, Tebaldi, Mario, Pavarotti, Vignas, Lazaro, O'Sullivan, Stracciari, Pagliughi, Gayarre, Masini, Stagno, Lauri-Volpi, Bellincioni, and countless others. Quite a few of these who sang there before 1897 are represented on the accompanying disc.
MAY: Decoding Wagner — An Invitation to His World of Music Drama
Thomas May's stated goal in Decoding Wagner is indeed summarized in his subtitle, An Invitation to His Music Dramas. Mr. May offers an introduction to those who may seek a reliable yet succinct guide in their first Wagnerian experience; a further potential readership is seen among those who have attended performances of Wagner but who wish to expand their appreciation of the music dramas. In his chronological overview of Wagner's oeuvre from the mid-1830s until the close of his career May presents an approachable guide to appreciating the composer's operatic genius. As an illustration of May's commentary on the works, a generous selection of Wagner's music is included on two Discs that accompany the volume in a protective sleeve.
The Cambridge Companion to the Lied
Books described as a "Companion" to this or that and published by university presses should be required to come with a Reader Beware label. As is the case with many books put out by university and many for-profit publishers, the main reason for publishing these is to advance the tenure and promotion prospects of the authors. This is not a bad thing, except that all too often the books aren't very good.
DUNSBY: Making Words Sing: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Song
In Making Words Sing, Jonathan Dunsby investigates what he calls the "vocality" of song, that is, the "quality of having voice," as the author states in the introduction to his study. By using this perspective, Dunsby focuses on the intensification of the text that occurs when words are set to music, which stands in opposition to the kind of "songfulness" that Lawrence Kramer discussed in Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).
RANDALL & DAVIS: Puccini & the Girl
"Puccini & the Girl" is a rare and engrossing work of scholarship that can be enjoyed on several levels. For the Puccini-lover, to say nothing of one who has a special interest in La Fanciulla del West, it will provide a wealth of information not previously available, particularly all in one place. Any one interested in the creative process will find it exposed and examined clearly. The scholar will recognize the fascinating chance discovery, the thrill of the chase and the deep rewards of work undertaken lovingly and with rigorous care by the dedicated and passionate co-authors.
HANSEN: The Sibyl Sanderson Story — Requiem for a Diva
Jack Winsor Hansen's 520-page biography of Sibyl Sanderson (1865 - 1903) is packed with romanticism and gossip that will delight and titillate true worshipers of operatic divas and inquisitive opera fans. It also fills a gap in the music-historical writings about opera at the end of the 19th century.
The Cambridge Companion to John Cage
Cage's music is like Einstein's theorem: most people know it exists, know it's important, but beyond these facts know nothing about it (count me in this category when it comes to Einstein).
WEAVER & PUCCINI: The Puccini Companion
If any opera lover feels daunted by the many biographies and analytical tomes dedicated to the life and art of Giacomo Puccini, Norton has done that reader a tremendous favor with the publication of The Puccini Companion. Tightly organized, this series of essays details the life, discusses the operas, and provides a wealth of supplementary information about the composer.
STRAUSS: Der Ziguenerbaron
When Rudolf Bing came to the Metropolitan Opera in 1950, he scored a tremendous hit with a new staging of the perennial operetta favorite Die Fledermaus. Both at the opera house on 39th Street and on national tour, the slickly Broadwayized Fledermaus packed in big audiences season after season. A decade later, Bing assembled a fine cast and proven production team for the company's first performances of Strauss's Der Zigeunerbaron in fifty years. 18 performances were scheduled. It sank like a stone and has never appeared at the MET again.
EVERETT: The Musical — A Research and Information Guide
Much current popular culture assumes that its audience is knowledgeable of the American musical. References to, and parodies of, specific musicals are frequently a part of episodes of The Simpsons and South Park, and ads for companies as diverse as The Gap and the World Wrestling Entertainment promotion recently have restaged numbers from West Side Story to plug their products or events. Rarely, if ever, are the sources acknowledged; it is simply taken for granted that a general audience will understand the quotations and parodies.
TOMMASINI: The New York Times Essential Library: Opera — A Critic’s Guide to the 100 Most Important Works and the Best Recordings
"I particularly want to reach newcomers" writes Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music critic, in his preface. I do not think they will be helped very much by this book. A rookie who picks it up and reads the subtitle may expect something more than two operas by Bellini, two by Donizetti, one Gounod (not Faust), one Massenet (not Manon) and no Lohengrin.
KRAMER: Opera and Modern Culture — Wagner and Strauss
"New musicology" is the cultural study, analysis and criticism of music, which proffers the belief that music has societal, religious, political, personal, and sexual agendas. Consequently, new musicology, much like the discussion of such topics at social gatherings, can be polarizing.
VIVALDI: Orlando Furioso
The box-sets contaning the complete recordings of the music of J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart occupy substantial shelf space in the collections of those fortunate enough to possess them.
SMART: Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera
Here's a serious niche book, a relatively slender volume dealing with a topic at once both arcane and surprisingly central to some of the major controversies in opera production today. I think it has major problems but it has become for me the pebble dropped into the pond that sends ripples to unexpected places, raising interesting questions in the process.
The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera
Among the recent publications on opera, The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, edited by David Charlton, breaks new ground with its systematic and thorough exploration of grand opera, a specific part of the genre which played an important role in the musical culture of the nineteenth century.
LOEWENBERG: Annals of Opera, 1597-1940
This volume has long been regarded as the definitive work on the subject, and has been quoted in countless later works whenever a reference was required to the performance histories of individual operas. Taken as a whole, especially when one considers the state of library science when the book was first written, it is a magnificent piece of work, and belongs on the bookshelf of every researcher in the operatic field.
GOUNOD: Faust
During his heyday, Alain Vanzo did not get quite the recognition he deserved. Though the voice was sweeter and more beautiful than the somewhat white sound of Nicolai Gedda, it was the latter who got all the plums; primo because he was a discovery of Legge and a few years earlier on the scene and secundo while opera managers could cast him in other languages than French and Italian.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Reviews
There. I said it. Let the Glimmerglasswegians and the Santa Fesions rail and fuss, but OTSL has really got the whole package together: top quality musical offerings, exciting young singers well on the road to major careers, well-considered theatrical stagings that rival any major house (any), and an extra-musical ambiance that is just about unbeatable. Approaching the house through the lawn area profuse with candle-lit tables, free to any pre-show picnickers who care to use them, and being able to stay after the show to party, applaud, and mingle with the artists in the large Fest tent, well, it is sort of Glyndebourne without the ‘tude.
Add to the mix the fact that this troupe has consistently performed their repertoire in English, in a small house that fosters great immediacy of the theatrical experience, at competitive prices, and, good God, it is 'popular' opera! (Even when the title is not of the bread-and-butter variety). True, the Loretto Hilton lobby is cramped on SRO evenings but. . .there is always a stroll available on that candle-dotted lawn.
My recent visit found this resourceful company in its usual fine artistic form, beginning with as enchanting a production as I imagine possible of Mozart’s Il Re Pastore (The Shepherd King).
Wolfgang’s youthful (he was nineteen) work is set to a much-used libretto by Metastasio, and is of the formulaic opera seria vintage. You know, the kind that can be dead boring no matter how well it is performed. Not so here, thanks to a wholly winning, and dramatically truthful production directed by Chas Rader-Shieber.
For Mr. R-S has imagined it as a sort of Upstairs Downstairs episode with high notes, set in an English country house in a prior century, where a wealthy young woman and her fiance are hosting another well-to-do couple for a visit. After perusing the actual score of Re in this setting, our heroine becomes committed to the group’s enacting the story as the day’s entertainment, assigning roles to not only the other society figures, but also to the bustling servants.
This giddy, play-acting atmosphere yielded impressive results, not only in filling the story with meaningful (and not distracting) stage business, but also allowing for emotional honesty and invention in the many (usually) static set pieces of this genre. It did not hurt that David Zinn’s set was one of the most beautiful I can recall on this St. Louis stage, impeccably dressed. Nor that Robert Perziola’s classy costumes spoke volumes in defining the character relationships, and clarifying plot absurdities, including one drop-dead-gorgeous beaded gown for “Arminta.”
But all this technical brilliance would have been for naught without a top notch cast, and this, too, OTSL delivered in spades. The Gerdine Young Artists development program is a model of its kind, and this investment obviously pays off handsomely as four of the five soloists are former participants.
L to R (foreground): Paul Appleby as Agenore, Daniela Mak as Tamiri, Alek Shrader as Alexander, Heidi Stober as Aminta, and Maureen McKay as Elisa in Il Re Pastore
Heidi Stober was radiant as the young affianced woman who is compelled to impersonate the Shepherd King Arminta and enact his plight. Her ample, well-schooled, warm lyric soprano blossomed especially above the staff, and her stage demeanor served up a generous helping of star-quality. Miss Stober was well partnered by her “betrothed,” the tenor Alek Schrader, pressed into duty to play the emperor Alexander. Mr. Schrader has an exceptionally pleasing Mozartean timbre, and his bravura rapid-fire melismatic phrases were heart-racingly delivered.
My favorable impression of Maureen McKay in last summer’s Un Cosa Rara was here confirmed with a securely sung Elisa, a maid who briefly enjoys enacting the longings of a noblewoman. Miss KcKay is capable of regaling us with accurate cascades of fioritura, likewise deploying her crystal clear tone in melting legato phrases. Her spunky stage savvy is equally bewitching. Paul Appleby has fewer fireworks to negotiate in the role of Agenore (advisor to Alexander, in love with Tamiri), but he sang with style and panache. As Tamiri, Daniela Mack complemented her cast mates with her slightly darker rich tone and attention to every musical detail. All five offered fine English diction, coached on this occasion by soprano Erie Mills.
In the pit, conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni discovered all the youthful spirit and buoyant lyrical possibilities in the score (after a bit of a slack rhythmic start in the first few bars), and there was wonderful solo instrumental work as well throughout the evening. His conscientious partnering of the singers seemed to free them to soar through this youthful-but-challenging work.
The baton was successfully passed the very next night to another conductor whose stock is rising, Michael Christie, who helmed a musically rich reading of The Ghosts of Versailles, by John Corigliano, libretto by William M. Hoffman. After a sensational debut at the Metropolitan Opera in the early 90’s which was followed by several other revivals in major houses, Ghosts languished, largely (it is believed) owing to the lavish original designs, and massive instrumental and vocal forces required.
At St. Louis, the production team and composer have sought to down-size the piece to make it more accessible to smaller opera companies. As evidenced here, they have been largely successful in their attempt. Corigiliano is a brilliant orchestrator, and his original score took full advantage of the huge pit and full band of the Met. Here, Ghosts was re-scored in a new performing edition commissioned by OTSL and executed by John David Earnest. It was quite a successful trade-off, and much variety and color remained, many times (favorably) suggesting the smaller scores of Benjamin Britten. While the instrumental presence was almost always ample, there were a few climactic moments that seemed a mite under-powered, not least of which was the very final sting of Act One. These minor quibbles aside, this was a very fine re-working of the piece, that retained its musical integrity.
Kevin J. Glavin as Louis XVI and Maria Kanyova as Marie Antoinette with (at rear l. to r.) Dorothy Byrne as Susanna and Hanan Alattar as Rosina in The Ghosts of Versaille
We were equally fortunate with the physical production, directed by James Robinson, with sets by Allen Moyer, costumes by James Schuette, and most important, highly evocative video projections by Wendall K. Harrington. As we entered the auditorium, we discovered the theatre at Versailles, on stage, being refurbished by a contemporary restoration crew in blue jump suits. That image segued into the arrival of the ghosts, attired in lavish period costumes, and superb wigs/make-up by Tom Watson (a company treasure, he). The first notes of the score sounded, sans the usual conductor’s entrance, and the lighting melded into disorienting video work that transported us to the deserted stage of long ago, “beyond time” as the program noted. It should be said that Paul Palazzo provided the uncommonly fine lighting designs for both evening’s performances.
One element of the work that resisted diminution was the large cast demand. It took a village to get this work up, and there was great depth in the entire cast largely thanks (again) to the company’s young artists, who also formed the chorus under Sandra Horst’s direction. I did find that the dancers contributed less to the overall dramatic experience than they might have, and elimination of the dance corps might be a possible further cut-back. The stage got crowded at times, although Mr. Robinson not only managed the traffic well, but focused the important dramatic moments and developed believable characters and strong relationships.
Without creating a laundry list, it is hard to single out all who were excellent in this large ensemble cast. Certainly expectations were high for Maria Kanyova (another former apprentice) as Marie Antoinette, and she did not disappoint. Ms. Kanyova has a responsive soprano, with a hint of metal that stands her in good stead in dramatic segments, but she can also scale her voice down to float effective pianissimi that veritably float above the staff. She was a worthy successor to the great Teresa Stratas who created the role. Christopher Feigum was suitably winning as Figaro, although in his first big aria all the acting seemed to be external. The internal spark of creation crept in sometime during his (quite funny) Act One finale drag moments as the harem girl and he remained fully engaged for the rest of night. His pliant, smooth baritone gave considerable pleasure and he is a talent to watch.
Mr. Corigliano apparently loves his baritones and he created a fine complementary foil in Beaumarchais, well-taken on this occasion by James Weston. As should be, Mr. Weston has a little more maturity of tone and the bronze patina of his upper register contributed to a very effective contrast. His love for the doomed heroine was wonderfully embodied and his alternately witty and sensitive delivery enabled a well-rounded character to emerge.
As stage characters in the concurrent Figaro comedy, a jewel of an ensemble worked tightly together in a slightly heightened play-acting style. Samuel Read Levine (Leon), Paula Murrihy (Cherubino), Sean Panikkar (Almaviva) were all terrific, with young artist Jeanette Vechhione capturing the most applause for her technically secure stratospheric singing as Florestine. Hanan Alattar and Dorothy Byrne were exquisite in their limpid lyrical outpouring of the extended Act Two duet for Rosina and Susanna, a musical high point.
The real-time bad guys were equally well-served by Lee Gregory, a vocally assured and physically active (and fearless) Wilhelm, and by stentorian, tireless tenor (and fine character actor) Matthew DiBattista as Begearss. Elizabeth Batton did everything possible to amuse us in her star turn as Samira. Originally created for the particular gifts of Marilyn Horne, Ms. Batton made it her own with plummy tone, a well-modulated chest voice, and sound technique in the middle and (ringing) upper reaches. Quite a comedian, she wisely eschewed the baritonal power of Ms. Horne for an equally successful and personalized performance.
If I had to mention only three more performers, I would include the characterful Louis XVI from Kevin J. Glavin, the firm-voiced Marquis of Kevin Park, and the delightful Woman with Hat sung by Erin Holland.
Upon re-visiting The Ghosts of Versailles I still found it a particularly well-calculated mix of old and new styles, in turn challenging and comfortable, telling a dramatically satisfying and captivating story of fate and acceptance. If I still feel that the arias go on a bit longer than needed to make their musical or dramatic point, they never become uninteresting, especially in the hands of such a capable roster of performers.
This production will go on to fall’s Wexford Festival, and it alone would make it worth the trip to Ireland. It deserves many more performances.
James Sohre